The A-Å of Scandinavian fashion

Scandinavian fashion is having something of a moment. Dorothea Gundtoft, author of new book Fashion Scandinavia, helps us compile this complete guide, from haute couture to rubber wellies

Text by ⁄Dorothea Gundtoft & Emma Pressley

A is for Acne

Back in 1997, Acne Studios started like a lot of Scandinavian fashion success stories, when Jonny Johansson made 100 pairs of jeans in raw denim and handed them to his friends and family in Stockholm. Today, it’s a superstar global brand, with cult stores that look like art installations in all the world’s fashion capitals – and it’s expanded from jeans to become a full fashion label, producing everything from suits to sharp knitwear and sunglasses. They even do publishing better than most – the biannual Acne Paper has contributors as varied as Carine Roitfeld, David Lynch, Noam Chomsky and Tilda Swinton. Interesting fact: Acne Studio’s Stockholm flagship store on Norrmalmstorg is at the location where the term Stockholm Syndrome was coined in 1973 to describe the psychological phenomenon first noted when hostages in a bank robbery became empathetic to the robbers.acnestudios.com